Heidi Grant Halvorson - Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence

Advance Praise for Focus

For leaders and managers of people, this is must reading: its like finding the missing link in human evolution or the Rosetta Stone in language translation.

Ken Shelton, editor of Leadership Excellence magazine

Focus is an engaging, highly practical guide that makes complex ideas at the forefront of motivational science accessible to a wide audience, offering surprising insights and applications for dealing more effectively with everyday work and life challenges. It will be an eye-opener for people who thought they understood motivation.

Walter Mischel, past president of the Association for Psychological Science

How do we actually motivate people to disrupt or drive change? In their eye-opening book Focus, social scientists Heidi Grant Halvorson and Tory Higgins provide a comprehensive tool kit for motivating yourself and those you lead.

Whitney Johnson, Harvard Business Review contributor and author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream

Focus is a clear and engaging tour of central ideas in the study of motivation. Written by Tory Higgins, one of the worlds leading experts on the topic, together with Heidi Grant Halvorson, it provides a powerful lens for understanding what makes friends, bosses, coworkers, and spouses tick. After you read it, your relations with other people will never be the same.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice and Practical Wisdom (with Kenneth Sharpe)

Why do some people succeed at attaining goals, and others do not? Why do some products sell, whereas others lie on the shelf? Focus addresses these questions (and many more) in a deeply thoughtful, highly practical, and completely engaging way. This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the fundamentals of persuasion and motivation.

Jennifer Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University, author of The Dragonfly Effect

This great book makes science funproviding an empowering look at evidence-based research on how to optimize our motivational focus. Its packed with big ideas that give us insight into how we can apply this wisdom to all aspects of our lives.

Brian Johnson, founder and CEO of the en*theos Academy for Optimal Living

Focus is brilliant. Two of the leading researchers on success and motivation, Heidi Grant Halvorson and Tory Higgins, have teamed up to give us an extraordinary gift of clear thinking, clever writing, and enjoyable reading about a topic of vital concern to all of uswhat drives our thinking, our choices, and our actions. Its an absolutely fascinating read, and I learned more from this book than from any other Ive read in a long, long time. And so will you. Focus is full of stunning insights, illuminating examples, practical advice, and solid and surprising research. Its a fascinating new perspective on motivation, and it has lessons in it for managers, parents, teachers, coaches, students, researchers, writers, coworkers... even film buffs and romantics. Buy this book and gain a whole new perspective on your life, your work, your family, and your community. It is that good.

Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and the Deans Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

FCUS

Use Different Ways of

Seeing the World for

Success and Influence

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.

E. Tory Higgins, Ph.D.

H UDSON STREET PRESS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014, USA

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

First published by Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013

Copyright Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Halvorson, Heidi Grant-,1973

Focus : use different ways of seeing the world for success and influence / Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-60989-7

1. Motivation (Psychology) 2. Attention. 3. Success. I. Higgins, E. Tory (Edward Tory), 1946- II. Title.

BF503.H346 2013

153.8dc23 2012033311

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

To our family members, past and present, who shaped how we see and deal with life, and to our Motivation Science Center family, for the joy and privilege of working with you.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

W EEKLY MEETINGS AT C OLUMBIA U NIVERSITYS M OTIVATION S CIENCE Center have always been entertaining as well as instructiveand not merely because our research topic, why people do the things they do, is more fun to think about than, say, advances in actuarial accounting. Our subterranean conference room is stuffed with chairs that surround a long table, often covered with papers, drinks, and snack foods. Our chalkboards are filled with badly drawn diagrams and graphs (some that weve been talking about for months). Each week, one brave soul presents his or her work to the rest of the group, to field tough questions and receive feedback... sometimes complimentary, sometimes critical, often humorous.

While each of us at the center has his or her own quirksour own habits of (long-winded) speech and (not particularly well-thought-out) dresswhen it comes to how we work, we break down quite clearly into two general camps. (As it happens, most people in every workplace, classroom, or community on the planet belong to one of these two camps.) The distinction between the two camps can best be illustrated by introducing you to two of our most entertaining (and strong-willed) colleagues, whose names we have changed to protect the innocent (ourselves): Jon and Ray.

Jon is the kind of person that some people might call difficult, though probably he (and we) would prefer the term skeptic. It is a challenge to get to the end of a sentence in Jons presence without having him interrupt you to tell you how the beginning of it was all wrong. He is immaculate in his appearance, chooses his words with precision, and never procrastinates. He is, by nature, a pessimist (the defensive kind that we describe later)try to tell him things are going to work out just fine and watch as he gets visibly uncomfortable with your reckless and nave attitude.